curiousgirl's playground

I've been idle for a while and actively pursuing a few projects of mine...one of which is Yoink'd.

Yoink'd Mediabox is a fully AJAX / DHTML web media player (like Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp, etc..) for finding, organizing, and sharing available online video content (from youtube, google video, etc.). Features include:

• Ability to convert any raw RSS feed into a playlist
• View real-time live yoinks from friends (integrated with Facebook)
• Ability to completely embed the media player onto any website in various formats (Yoink'd Mini and Yoink'd Widget)
• Auto-relinking of dead video links
• Ability to play on any web-enabled device (browser, iPhone, Nintendo Wii, PS3, iPod Touch, etc..)
• Customization via multiple skins

Our core value lies in user experience and our media sharing capabilities. We truly want to change the way we view media on the web.

Enjoy this short demo to the sweet, tunes of Aly and AJ in "The Potential Breakup Song."

technorati tags: yoink'd, yoinkd, mediabox, aly, aj, potential breakup song, yoinkd.com

October 9, 2007 | 4:19 AM | Comments (1)

I've been taking a closer look at the mobile space and found a number of very well-written blogs. One of favorites is Mobile Opportunity written by seasoned industry expert Michael Mace.

One of his older posts back in April 2007 caught my attention. He points out an interesting ultimate social networking tool, Spitr, a project by Inrvoice LLC being worked on by technologists and biomedical researchers:

From what is described, the product is pretty scary if you think about it: more real-time than Facebook status updates or Twitter. Imagine having your thoughts immediately being published live. It is the ultimate form of stalking yourself. Pros? A definite time saver (no more typing or fiddling with gadgets). Could very well be one of the most accurate ways of understanding and analyzing human thought. Cons? How does this work exactly? Privacy issues, of course. I'd like to keep most of my thoughts to myself. Is there some way of "filtering" your own thoughts? Wow...that'd be kind of weird - like quality checking your own thoughts...

technorati tags: twitter, social networking, spitr, bluetooth

August 30, 2007 | 9:25 AM | Comments (1)

I came across a great Fast Company article titled "Strategy by Design" by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, written back in June 2005. Tim emphasizes the importance of design thinking as a catalyst for innovation productivity. "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems."

1. Hit the streets. Go out there and be observant. Get original insights from your market.
2. Recruit T-shaped people. People with breadth and depth. Expertise in one area that can be applied to many disciplines.
3. Build to think. Focus on problem solving. "Design thinking is inherently a prototyping process....The goal isn't to create a close approximation of the finished product or process; the goal is to elicit feedback that helps us work through the problem we're trying to solve."
4. The prototype tells the story. Generate feedback and make corrections. Visually describe your strategy.
5. Design is never done. We live in a changing world. "The market is always changing; your strategy needs to change with it. Since design thinking is inherently rooted in the world, it is ideally suited to helping your strategy evolve."

• Is design often overlooked? Even in my undergraduate computer science courses at Penn, I've remembered that the "specification" phase was often rushed through or , worse yet, done -after- the coding was completed.
• How easy is it to sell design? Of course, from a business perspective, people like to see numbers and quantify the value of a feature, project, idea, etc. Adaptive Path has taken a look at this issue by applying ROI methodology to user experience design, ensuing that companies are only investing in high-value projects. The truth of the matter is that it's almost impossible to appropriately capture all the "value" derived from design and user experience. If this is the case, how do design consultant shops effectively pitch to new clients who don't recognize the benefits of design thinking?
• Design thinking is here to stay. Just watch the trends. Emerging design schools (Stanford's d.school and Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design). iPod/iPhone phenomenon. Google and importance of simplicity. Less is more. "Web 2.0"-style design.

» Interview with Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO (by Brandon Schauer of Adaptive Path)

technorati tags: design, design thinking, design strategy, ideo, tim brown, business, innovation, adaptive path

August 5, 2007 | 1:12 PM | Comments (0)

Thanks to my friend Solomon Bisker for the link to this BusinessWeek article, "Are Designers The Enemy of Design?" by Bruce Nussbaum.

• Design is our future, our life. Not surprising. See 2007 Top Jobs.
  
  
  "Over the past decade, design has evolved to become an articulated, formalized method of solving problems that can be widely used in business—and in civil society. Design’s focus on observing consumer/patient/student—human behavior, it’s emphasis on iteration and speed, its ability to construct, not destruct, its search for new options and opportunities, its ability to connect to powerful emotions, its optimism, made converts out of tough CEOs. AG Lafely at P&G, Immelt at GE and many others embraced design. Now Mayor Daley of Chicago and Mayor Livingstone of London are embracing it."
  
  
• Design democracy is the new norm. People want to participate in the designing of their own lives (examples cited: MySpace, iPod, blogs, fashion, Starbucks..). They crave customization, personalization, individualism, and freedom to do whatever they want. They want to feel special, be different, be in control of their lives.
• New age of creativity and collaboration. The world where everyone will need to work together (a world where MBAs meet artists meet medical doctors meet investment bankers meet engineers).
• Knowledge and skills are not enough. "The commoditization of manufacturing and knowledge and its outsourcing to Asia, left US companies unable to compete to make profits." Companies need real innovation.

Will we continue to live a life of constant change and chaos? How do we provide stability and sustainability? Don't people intuitively want to counter change? Or has modern day 21st-century society already involved to a state where people actually -desire- change?

I see this even in everyday life activities. I'm on vacation with my family in Europe until the end of this month. Just this morning, as we were about to eat lunch, I asked my younger brother Kevin to go to the kitchen for some freshly cooked fried rice. He responded saying, "No, Jing, we've been having rice for the past few days. Why not switch it up a bit? I want some fish fingers ..."

technorati tags: design, design democracy, future, change

May 19, 2007 | 7:10 AM | Comments (0)

Just when we hear about "Save Pandora" last April... my dearest friend Charles Yong (Berkeley, '07) gives me a sneak preview of one of his latest projects: Chargle Jukebox Beta (Click Stable version only, and type any song name into the box provided.).

In a nutshell, Chargle Jukebox takes what you can normally do through traditional search on, say, YouTube, and immediately tries to match your song video, returning the song of highest relevance. Instead of trying to search through several music videos, Chargle Jukebox directly connects you. Currently, it searches through video networks such as YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, and Veoh.

• Simple, easy-to-use, and elegant. Enough said.
• Efficiently leverages and aggregates existing music. Similar to sites like radio.blog.club, Chargle Jukebox streams data from existing music video sites. Unlike radio.blog.club, Chargle Jukebox incorporates "rich media" video (which may or may not be desirable for pure music listeners).
• Future richer web. Build a social networking component? I think it'd be interesting to see this type of functionality incorporated to an existing music social music community like Last.fm. This only enhances the end-user front-end music listening and discovery.
• Easily scalable and deployable. Did I mention that my genius programmer friend Charles coded this project in just only 2 days?
• Future potential. Sure, the player can be more feature-rich, but this model of streaming data from -multiple existing sources- can be applied to all web media, not just music. Mashups are definitely the future of the web.

Charles Yong deserves more than just a paragraph to describe him, but I do want to say a few things. Hands down -- he is one of the most talented, most well-rounded people I've ever met. Aside from being an amazingly talented programmer, he's actually a premed (soon-to-be medical student as he was accepted to medical schools like Yale) senior at Berkeley. I had known Charles since high school, where he was equally as impressive. Charles was an all-star student at Rancho Cotate High School: 4.91 GPA (Is that even possible?), President of the Interact Club, Founder of Stepping Stones program bringing high-school students to local elementary schools to make presentations about goal-setting, Senior Teen Attorney for the Teen Court, Tutor/Mentor, Varsity Tennis Team, 2nd Degree Karate Black Belt, Received the Youth Summer Research Award, Completed a summer internship at the National Institutes of Health, working with top researchers....(the list goes on I'm sure...). On top of all this, Charles is an extremely charismatic, social person and great to be around.

Now, here's a list of projects he has or is involved in (those I'm aware of):

• Syzyx: pioneer AJAX-driven blogging platform (before "AJAX" was even coined and still has features which Charles says "does not exist on any other existing platform" such as Livejournal, Xanga, Wordpress..)
• Below the Mean: comic strip on life at UC Berkeley (Read more press here. Please add closet "artist" and "illustrator" to list of characteristics for Charles.)
• Chargle: Charles' personal homepage and what I call "true" personalized search :)

Charles, like I told you, perhaps you should reconsider medical school ;p.

technorati tags: chargle, charles yong, music, youtube, mashup, technology, idea

May 2, 2007 | 7:53 PM | Comments (0)

• Do you really understand the real need (sometimes unspoken need) of your customer?
• Can you give the customer what he or she really wants?

This is the motto of Song. If you haven't heard of Song before, they are a "lifestyle" airline (later killed and absorbed by Delta) targeted mainly towards women. Song is all about creating a deep, emotional relationship with the consumer:

• Experience creators. They have renovated the entire end-to-end flight experience from the time you punch in your flight information at the kiosk to when you are at the gate to when you are sitting in your seat. The pastel colors of Song are carried throughout this journey (Song logo/backdrop at airport, airport Song gate design, flight chairs, etc). Even the diaper changing station of the plane has the words "oh baby!" (white text on blue) written on it.
• Brand the people. Song employees are not interviewed. They audition. People are taught "how to be Song." People talk about whether or not they are "Song" or how much "Song" they are. The company has turned "Song" into an adjective. (Like how Google has turned itself into a verb.) Are you "Song?"
• Introduce novelty. Song is an airline, yet it has publicized itself in completely innovative ways, methods people would not typically associate with an airline. For instance, Song has a concept store in Massachusetts (much like the Apple store) where visitors can stop by for a visit. They have run a series of ads - print and TV - to convey their brand. These ads typically feature real, happy-looking people. The created scene is often magical yet not surreal.

The notorious saying goes, "I know I'm wasting half of my advertising dollars. I just don't know which half." After one year since Song's campaign, the team met for an evaluation of ad effectiveness. To their dismay, they only found that 15% of their target demographic could both recall their ads and associate them with the Song brand. What does this mean? It means there is a such thing as being *too* creative and out-of-the-box. Yes, you will grab people's attention, but they will not necessarily associate their confusion / surprise with your brand. You can't expect people to be smart enough (or proactive enough) to connect the dots.

• Create a lovemark. Follow the advice of one of the greatest advertising agencies of all time, Saatchi & Saatchi.

  Lovemarks transcend brands. They deliver beyond your expectations of great performance. Like great brands, they sit on top of high levels of respect - but there the similarities end.

  Lovemarks reach your heart as well as your mind, creating an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without. Ever.

  Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence. Lovemarks are a relationship, not a mere transaction. You don’t just buy Lovemarks, you embrace them passionately. That’s why you never want to let go.

  Put simply, Lovemarks inspire "Loyalty Beyond Reason."

  
  

• It's all about relationships. Not just with your customer but with your friends, your boss, your boyfriend, your children, your dog, and even your stock portfolio. It's how you manage and understand these relationships that really matter. I suppose at the end of the day, the essence is understanding what it means to be human. What motivates people? What do they care about? What are their inner wants and desires? Why do they do what they do? What are their stories?
• Feeling > Thinking. "How do you think?" is on the outside. "How do you feel?" is on the inside. Getting to know the inside is what counts. How well can you read the inside?

technorati tags: song, airline, experience, experience marketing, customer, customer need, lovemark

March 26, 2007 | 4:13 PM | Comments (0)

In my Wharton marketing class on advertising (one of my favorite classes this semester), our major group project for the semester is to create a new advertising strategy for Aquafina: identifying our target audience, what media vehicles to use, allocating budget expenditures, creating a few creative proposals on potential ad executions, etc. We have to produce both a final report and presentation. The top groups in the class get to present in front of Aquafina executives.

Today, the Aquafina folks came in again to answer some questions for our class which leads to some of my thoughts below:

Staying competitive in the water industry is tough, and research shows that there is little brand differentiation (Poland Springs, Deer Park, Dasani, Aquafina, etc..) among consumers of water. However, this does not mean that innovation cannot exist in this established market. Take PepsiCo's Gatorade or Glaceau's Vitamin Water for instance. New creative strategies aren't limited to just water. Remember the Axe effect? These examples illustrate that the key is really to identify a target consumer and build a strong, deep emotional relationship with them.

Date your consumers first. Then marry them. Get them to drink you all the time. The Aquafina lady said (I'm paraphrasing), "Advertising water is like a dating game. You first want to date your consumers. In the current water industry, because of little brand differentiation, it's like showing up to a party where everyone is wearing jeans and a black top. The question is, what happens if you show up with a white top? Will people think you are cool, or will you just come out to be a loser?

The point the Aquafina lady mentioned made me think more about what it means to be different. Being different can definitely pay off. Some companies even preach it: Apple's Think Different. On the other hand, if you are too different, you might just be going after a non-existing market with not enough consumer demand. On the whole though, I've seen a lot of examples lately where going against the "crowd" is a great strategy in finding precious gems of value. In other words, companies derive their competitive advantage by doing what their competitors aren't doing. My hypothesis is that this competitive advantage may not always be long lasting. When other companies react and respond to what you are doing, the value of that "difference" becomes diminished (e.g. Tag body spray has entered to compete head on with Axe. In fact, their campaigns are so similar that consumers have thought Tag was actually an Axe product, according to David Rubin, Director for Brand Development for Axe North America):

How to avoid losing competitive advantage? Be responsive to market conditions and never cease to innovative. In others words, be observant. Reflect, think, and react...quickly. Whatever happens. Just don't get too comfortable with the way things are.

technorati tags: aquafina, water, commodity, differentiation, competitive advantage, think different

March 12, 2007 | 3:03 PM | Comments (0)

Thanks to my dad for forwarding the link to Business 2.0's "The Next Net 25" (with short blurbs I added on each). Some observations of this data follow:

1. StumbleUpon - social websurfing
2. Slide - make easy slideshows on the web
3. Bebo - social network
4. Meebo - web-based integrated IM (better than AIM)
5. Wikia - hosting service for ad-supported community sites
6. Joost - interactive web TV (made by founders of Kazaa and Skype)
7. Dabble - tool for organizing videos into playlists of favorites
8. Metacafe - paying video creators for their work (not just a YouTube)
9. Revision 3 - production studio for geek-oriented online shows (started by Digg founder Kevin Rose)
10. Blip.tv- platform for syndicating serialized online shows
11. Fon - building a worldwide Wi-Fi network one router at a time
12. Loopt - around-the-clock friend tracking via mobile phone (Facebook stalking to a new level)
13. Mobio- mobile-phone mashups and widgets
14. Tiny- Flickr on the fly (pictures on your cellphone)
15. Soonr- access your home or office PC from your mobile phone
16. Turn- precise, automated ad targeting for advertisers
17. Adify- online marketplace for highly targeted ads
18. AdMob- place to buy ads for delivery to cell phones
19. SpotRunner- one-stop online shop for low-cost 30-second TV ads
20. ViTrue- lets corporate customers solicit, edit, and upload user-generated videos that promote their products
21. Success Factors- web-based performance & talent management (performance reviews, succession planning, and compensation)
22. JanRain- single sign-on service for multiple passwords that lets people hop freely from site to site
23. Logoworks- automates the design of logos, business cards, and stationery
24. Rearden Commerce- Web-based "virtual personal assistant" application that smoothly integrates hotel and flight reservations, meetings, and other events into your daily agenda
25. SimulScribe- effective way to convert voice-mail into scannable text (email, etc.)

GEOGRAPHY
California	72%
SF Bay Area	64%
New York City	8%
Other	20%
Total	100%

While the data is heavily Silicon Valley-centric, it is worthwhile to point out that Silicon Valley tends to be more concentrated in consumer-oriented businesses; New York City is known more for media/advertising; and Boston is more business-to-business. This trend may just be a function of a sector analyzed.

BUSINESS MODEL
Advertising	72%
Subscription	36%
Both	16%

Rich media video, broadband, mobile, interactive-internet-everything ...they will all be big.

AVERAGES
Employees	60
Founded	2004

FUNDING BY
Sequoia Capital	16% (4 out of 25)
Ron Conway	12%
Peter Thiel	8%
Benchmark Capital	8%

Hah, this chart really should be titled "who's taking away your ownership" (money, control, power...) ;p

technorati tags: business 2.0, 2007 startups, web 2.0, tech startups

February 22, 2007 | 6:40 PM | Comments (0)

I recently had a very inspiring lunch conversation with my entrepreneurial friend Peter, who reminded me of how often we forget to think. It's so easy to get wrapped up in day-to-day activities, whether it's at school, home, or work. As we become more comfortable with these routines, it's easy to forgot to ask ourselves "why" (i.e. Why are we doing this? Why does it work this way?) or "why not" (i.e. Why don't I do this instead? Why doesn't it work like so?). Peter told me the story around John Morgan (relating to birth of JPMorgan). John Morgan claimed to have worked only 30 hours per week, an absurd number compared to the notorious 80 to 100 hours per week investment banking job. When asked why he worked so little, Morgan replied that he spent the rest of the 50 hours thinking instead.

This story struck me in particular. How often do we take a breather from our daily lives just to stop and think for a bit, be more observant or critical? Peter is an excellent example of someone who stops to think. He lives by writing a new idea down each day. We should all remind ourselves to take more time off for thinking.

technorati tags: thinking, art of thinking

January 17, 2007 | 11:27 PM | Comments (2)

Where does great innovation come from? With the recent buzz around Apple's iPhone and d.school's, I couldn't help but think about this issue some more.

Where does it start? Customer vs. Technology

I'm currently taking Product Design taught by Professor Karl Ulrich. In the first class, the professor drew a distinction between two models of innovation: one based on addressing a customer need (i.e. wrench addressing "I want to fix things") versus another based on applying a newly found technology (technology push) (i.e. Glide, the dental floss, created after discovery of teflon). While we seem to see more of the first model, it does not always work. For instance, in drug discovery, it's not possible to address the need of "I want to treat disease x" and then make the drug to cure that disease. Instead, we see the second model more dominant in this field. The professor made two propositions:

1. For basic technologies, (e.g., new materials, chemical compounds, basic processes) technology push is a viable innovation model.
2. For complex, multi-function technologies, technology push is rarely viable.

This divide based on the -nature of the technology- gave me a new and different angle in looking at innovation.

What Really Matters

From reading various articles and posts, here's a summary of key points I've picked out:

• Empathizing with the customer. This statement cannot be overstated. It's also echoed in this Fast Company post. Questions to consider: Who is the target customer? What need are you addressing? How is this current need addressed (if at all)? How will the customer interact with the product you are designing to address that need? How do you think the customer will respond?
• Predicting the future. This is always the hardest part. To me, this means watching trends closely; observing the customer-product interaction; and taking notes. Studying, dissecting, analyzing 24-7. In a Creating Passionate Users' blog post, Kathy Sierra points out that great innovation is about dreaming and creating new customer needs, not satisfying old ones. She gives examples saying:
  The world never needed GUIs.
  Or digital cameras.
  Or cafe mochas.
  Or skateboards.
  There are two issues I see with Kathy's point. 1) If the need is completely "new," it could mean a market doesn't exist. 2) While radical innovation is most revolutionary or ground breaking, it is definitely the most difficult to do. I feel that these extraordinary cases represent more "happy accidents" than anything else. Take Google as the classic example. It's not like Larry and Sergey woke up one day and said "Let's invent a search engine better than Yahoo and create a multi-billion dollar company." It's a combination of being at the right time and the right place with the right product.
• Starting small. Perhaps the key really is to not spend all your time analyzing and thinking about "what would happen" but just getting into the market and testing the results. What better way to innovate than to ask your customers what they think, need, feel, want, desire? Of course, sometimes they need a push since they might not always know themselves. In a speech I heard at Penn a few years back, Josh Kopelman stated that incremental innovations are much easier to implement and drew on Half.com and Turntide as examples.
• Being a bit lucky.

Are you feeling lucky today?

technorati tags: innovation, product innovation, radical innovation, product design

January 12, 2007 | 4:13 PM | Comments (1)